Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, February 23, 1999

Historians place original 'Arcadia' in different areas

by Jim Bradshaw

In April of that year, he stopped at a place where he found the vegetation so lush and beautiful that he called it Arcadie, which was a region in ancient Greece that the poet Virgil immortalized because of its beauty and because of the simplicity of its people.

According to Verrazano's report of his travels, his Arcadie "appeared to be much more beautiful (than the other Newfoundland banks) and full of very tall trees. We named it Archadia,(sic) owing to the beauty of the trees."

Various studies have placed Verrazano's scenic site in different places.

Historian Samuel Eliot Morison flew along the Atlantic Coast from Cape Fear River to Barnegat, New Jersey, "in search of a hilly section with big trees." He wrote, "I have no hesitation in locating Verrazano's Arcadia at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. ... Later mapmakers continually moved it eastward until it became Acadie, the French name for Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and part of Maine."

Jean Daigle, editor of "The Acadians of the Maritimes." places Arcadie, as he reports Verrazano's original spelling, "in the region of present day Washington."

According to Daigle, "The peninsula that Verrazano named Arcadie is today called Delmarva because it covers parts of three American states (Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia). Not until the 17th century do we find the word Arcadie applied to the area further north now known as Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The letter 'r' was soon dropped and the name became Acadie."

Naomi Griffiths, and some other historians say that the name has nothing to do with Verrazano, that it comes from the Micmac Indians who lived there. In "The Acadians: Creation of a People," she says, "It was the French who first sent an expedition to settle that part of America which would produce the Acadians. They used the Indian name of the lands, and spelt it on their maps in many different ways, such as "la caddie, " and,"LaCadye,"